Not In Our Backyard: Spectroscopic Support for the CLASH z=11 Candidate MACS 0647-JD
Abstract
We report on our first set of spectroscopic Hubble Space Telescope observations of the z ≈ 11 candidate galaxy, which is strongly lensed by the MACSJ 0647.7+7015 galaxy cluster. The three lensed images are faint and we show that these early slitless prism observations are of sufficient depth to investigate whether this high-redshift candidate, identified by its strong photometric break at ≈ 1.5 µm, could possibly be an emission line galaxy at a much lower redshift. While such an interloper would imply the existence of a rather peculiar object, we show here that such strong emission lines would clearly have been detected. Comparing realistic, two-dimensional simulations to these new observations, we would expect the necessary emission lines to be detected at > 5σ, though we see no evidence for such lines in the dispersed data of any of the three lensed images. We therefore exclude that this object could be a low-redshift emission line interloper, which significantly increases the likelihood of this candidate being a bona fide z ≈ 11 galaxy.
Additional Information
© 2015 American Astronomical Society. Received 2014 November 26; accepted 2015 February 22; published 2015 April 23. We would like to thank the referee for his or her comments and suggestions to improve the quality of this paper. Support for AZ was provided by NASA through the Hubble Fellowship grant #HST-HF2-51334.001 A awarded by STScI. This work was supported in part by grant HST-GO-13317.13 from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by AURA under the NASA contract NAS5-26555.Attached Files
Published - 0004-637X_804_1_11.pdf
Submitted - 1502.05681v2.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 58048
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20150605-125813374
- HST-HF2-51334.001-A
- NASA Hubble Fellowship
- HST-GO-13317.13
- NASA
- NAS5-26555
- NASA
- Created
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2015-06-06Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-10Created from EPrint's last_modified field